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February 1, 1902 – Playwright, poet, author Langston Hughes born
February 2, 1807 - Congress bans foreign slave trade.
February 3, 1956 - Autherine Lucy enrolls as the first African American student at the University of Alabama.
February 4, 1913 - Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer who sparked Montgomery bus boycott, born.
February 5, 1934 – Major league home run champion Hank Aaron born.
February 6, 1867 – Robert Tanner Jackson becomes first African American to receive a degree in dentistry.
February 7, 1883 – Ragtime pianist and composer Hubie Blake born.
February 8, 1968 – Three South Carolina State students killed during segregation protest in Orangeburg, S.C.
February 9, 1964 - Arthur Ashe, Jr. becomes first African American on U.S. Davis Cup team.
February 10, 1989 – Ronald H. Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
February 11, 1990 - Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years.
February 12, 1909 – NAACP founded in New York City.
February 13, 1970 – Joseph L. Searles becomes first Black member of the New York Stock Exchange.
February 14, 1879 – B.K. Bruce of Mississippi becomes first African American to preside over U.S. Senate.
February 15, 1961 – U.N. sessions are disrupted by U.S. and African nationalists over assassination of Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.
February 16, 1874 - Frederick Douglass elected president of Freedman’s Bank and Trust.
February 17, 1902 – Marion Anderson, internationally acclaimed opera star, born.
February 18, 1931 – Toni Morrison, winner of 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, born.
February 19, 1923 - In Moore vs. Dempsey decision, U.S. Supreme Court guarantee due process of law to Blacks in state courts.
February 20, 1934 - Four Saints in Three Acts, by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein, premieres as the first Black-performed opera on Broadway.
February 21, 1965 – Malcolm X is assassinated in New York.
February 22, 1989 - Col. Frederick Gregory was the first African American to command a space shuttle mission.
February 23, 1868 – W.E.B. Dubois, scholar, activist and author of the Souls of Black Folk, born.
February 24, 1922 - The home of Frederick Douglass made a national shrine.
February 25, 1853 – First Black YMCA organized in Washington, D.C.
February 26, 1965 – Civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot by state police in Marion, Ala.
February 27, 1988 - Debi Thomas becomes first Black to win an Olympic medal in figure skating.
February 28, 1984 – Michael Jackson wins eight Grammy awards.
February 29, 1892 – Sculptor Augusta Savage was born.
